The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was approved by Congress on November 16, 1990 after years of American Indian lobbying due to the unfair treatment of American Indian remains. Since the enactment of NAGPRA there have been multiple complaints from the archaeological community that the way in which they conduct their jobs has been severely limited by the implementation of NAGPRA. In this study I compare data from the Secretary's Report to Congress questionnaire, conducted by the National Park Service's Federal Archaeology Program, to determine whether NAGPRA has caused an increase or decrease in the amount of archaeological administrative, laboratory, and fieldwork completed between 1985 and 2005. The comparison shows that there was a significant increase in specific archaeological practices in the years following the implementation of NAGPRA. Looking at the changes in work patterns of archaeologists allows us to assess the success of NAGPRA and it provides empirical evidence to evaluate the claims made by parties affected by the act.

Anticancer drugs, including nocodazole and vinblastine, work by disrupting the dynamics of microtubules. Unfortunately, these drugs often produce numerous side effects, including nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, loss of hair, increased chance of infection, and fatigue. My thesis research evaluated the efficacy of using repeated low doses of microtubule drugs instead of a single high dose, in an attempt to minimize side effects. Using nocodazole and vinblastine, I first established the minimum effective concentration that disrupts the microtubules in normal human cells grown in vitro and treated cells with those concentrations over a period of several days. I found that microtubules were increasingly depolymerized as the days progressed. Next, I tested a combination of nocodazole and vinblastine at low concentrations.

There is a debate among scholars regarding how courts should judge defendants caught in government decoy and sting operations. As a retributivist, I believe we should only punish those who are culpable. Following this assumption, I argue that courts should punish entrapped people if they are culpable and that the subjective test, which holds that a defendant is culpable if he was predisposed to commit the crime, should be the standard by which courts judge defendants who claim entrapment. The objective test, which focuses on the propriety of the government conduct, fails to accurately assess culpability because, under this test, the guilt of the defendant depends largely on what the average person would have done under the same circumstances. I also propose that if government conduct reached the level of outrageous, defendants found to be predisposed may claim that the government violated their right to due process.

Telomerase is associated with telomere production and nDNA protection. However, studies by Santos et al. have demonstrated that human telomerase has a mitochondrial entry sequence and in the presence of hydrogen peroxide it has been found inside the mitochondrion and may cause mitochondrial DNA mutations. Saccharomyces cerevisiae contains telomerase, but it does not have the mitochondrial entry sequence. To determine if the presence of telomerase in the mitochondria can induce mutations an experiment was developed in which a mitochondrion entry sequence would be fused to the S. cerevisiae telomerase enzyme. This fusion could then be screened in S. cerevisiae with an ade2 mutation for a simple color assay of mitochondrial activity. To date, no successful transformant has been identified. The frequency of incorrect ligations has been recognized and may indicate that the desired fusion is lethal to E. coli cells.

This paper tests the religious economy model for predicting Church behavior which predicts that religious firms will become more politically active on behalf of potential members in areas where competition for those members is most fierce. An analysis of data from a survey of 106 U.S. Catholic dioceses and archdioceses on outreach to Hispanic immigrants does not support this hypothesis. Religious competition and Church activism on immigration issues did not correlate. Rather, demand for services (measured as Hispanic presence within each diocese) was a better predictor of Church activism on immigration issues. This finding suggests that the "inelastic demand" assumption of the religious economy model must be dropped, re-opening demand side explanations for Church behavior across national and local contexts.

International development literature suggests that Internet marketing has the potential to play an important role in rural development. Despite the abundant theoretical support for incorporating Internet marketing into development strategies, there is little empirical evidence regarding whether Internet marketing actually generates development. This thesis helps fill this gap in the literature by investigating whether one Internet marketing application associated with development, competitive-online auctions (COAs), contributes to growth and poverty reduction. An analysis of price premiums earned in Latin American specialty coffee auctions and interviews with participating coffee farmers suggest that this application's strength lies in its ability to catalyze development; it provides the foundation from which farmers can pursue above-market prices, access new markets, and improve local living conditions. However, evidence also emphasizes that COAs do not inevitably advance development goals because their ability to do so is contingent on external factors, including the actions taken by individual farmers.

This thesis is a study of the empirical significance of sentencing information on jury decision-making. A challenge in conducting jury behavior research is that direct observation of jury deliberation is either illegal or impractical. Thus most studies of jury behavior are conducted using archival analysis and mock jury questionnaires. And while we have some information on the issue of jury instruction complexity on jury decision-making, we know very little about the specific role of sentencing information on jury decision-making. My research combines aspects of the jury decision-making literature with the sentencing literature, and thus fills a crucial gap in the literature. While we know much about jury decision-making and much about the process of sentencing--this research directly tested whether these two phenomena are related. Mock trials of 100 participants were used to collect the data for this thesis study. The results provide clear evidence that there is a significant effect on jury decision-making when the jurors are provided with sentencing information.

Dynein is a motor protein responsible for microtubule-based minus-end directed trafficking in eukaryotic cells. Dynactin is a protein complex involved in mitosis, embryonic development, intracellular trafficking and anchoring microtubules at the centrosome. While dynactin is widely recognized to improve the array of cargo with which dynein can associate, there has been some dispute over whether dynactin, which binds both dynein and microtubules, improves the distance that dynein can travel processively in the act of cargo trafficking before it dissociates from its microtubule. In this study, we compare movement parameters of wild type dynein-based vesicle movements with movements in cells where expression of dynactin's microtubule binding subunit, p150glued, has been knocked down. We find that dynactin does act as a processivity factor for dynein by increasing the distance that dynein can travel smoothly in a single movement event, but does not increase dynein's velocity.

This project considers the dual nature of early English thinker Francis Bacon as both a man of science and a devout Christian, through the texts Advancement of Learning, A Confession of Faith, and Of Gardens. Regardless of Bacon's preaching that the progression of scientific knowledge brings one closer to God, in fact human dominance over the natural world undermines religious faith. In particular, Bacon's own interest in early English gardening is used to illustrate the degradation of religious mysticism due to the rise of scientific discovery. Historically, Bacon has been credited as the catalyst of the scientific revolution due to his proposition of a new system of scientific inquiry based on empirical and inductive principles and the development of new arts and inventions. However, Bacon's embrace of the physical sciences and support for human advancement contradicts his alignment with religion. This tension is at the heart of the paper.

This thesis considers the role and function of God the Son within the anti-Trinitarian system John Milton envisions in his epic poem, Paradise Lost. In the poem, God the Father frequently acts independently of His Son, and the divine attributes that traditionally describe the Son, including His timelessness, no longer apply to the character Milton constructs. Despite this apparent degradation, Milton still elevates the Son and considers Him to be a character worthy of our respect. To account for this seeming paradox, I propose a reading of Paradise Lost that does not dismiss Milton's heretical belief in a subjected Son, but rather uses it as a way envision a new form of power. To do so, I compare the relationship between God the Father and His Son in terms of light and sun imagery, to demonstrate how power is divided and distributed between the two, according to the scientific principles of Milton's day. In addition, I consider how Michel Foucault's concept of the docile body both applies to the Son and explains His deference to the Father. Through these analyses, I hope to demonstrate that the Son's power exists as the result of properly exercising His free will, a will that would not have been His own had He been one with His Father.